


Off the Grid

by Fabrisse



Category: Tron (1982), Tron: Legacy (2010)
Genre: Lora - Freeform, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-20
Updated: 2011-11-20
Packaged: 2017-10-26 08:38:04
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,948
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/280962
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fabrisse/pseuds/Fabrisse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fic: Tron/Tron: Legacy, Alan/Sam. Kevin finds out.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Off the Grid

**Author's Note:**

  * For [dreamlittleyo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dreamlittleyo/gifts).



> This is a gift for Dreamlittleyo on LJ from her prompt.

It took hours of coding to get to where they were now -- and, frankly, Alan wasn’t entirely sure where that was.

Quorra helped sometimes, and her insights were invaluable, but it was usually Sam, him, and Kevin’s notes. Lora had reviewed the specs for her laser, a soft smile on her face as she touched the old tech, and pronounced it fine for what they were doing.

She took her husband aside when she was done. “It wasn’t the laser that worried you.” Lora glanced over at Sam, huddled in front of the screen, willing it to yield him back the grid.

“No. It wasn’t.” He followed her eye line. “Sam’s known us for far too long.”

Lora kissed his cheek. “He hasn’t known you. _I_ know you, and I know you would only be considering it if you got signals.”

“It’s been years since I’ve done this kind of intense low-level coding. Sam’s good, not in Kevin’s class -- yet -- because he doesn’t have the kind of experience we got back in the day, but he’s coming along.”

His wife smiled at him. “And you’re finding the intellectual stimulation attractive. Plus the late nights are wearing down your inhibitions.”

Alan looked at her fondly over his glasses. “You know me too well. And he’s a good looking young man even without the rest of it. Still, nothing will happen.”

Lora hugged him. “I know you won’t initiate anything, but as far as I’m concerned our pact still holds. Tell me about it if or when you get involved. Don’t take stupid risks. Don’t break his heart.” She stroked his hair back. “Or yours.”

“How did I get so lucky?” Alan asked.

“You and Kevin were a great team for everything. I loved him. I love you. And I’ve known that you love men as well as women since before we married.”

He held her close. “Not every wife would have been so accommodating.”

“You’ve accommodated my flings, too. It’s why we have a good marriage.”

“It is indeed.” Alan kissed her lightly one last time and they both chuckled as she went out the door.

Sam said, “Alan, come look at this. I think I’ve found a deeper code that may give me one of the grid games.”

“That would be great.” He walked back over to his terminal and grinned at Sam’s enthusiasm.

***  
Several days and too many nights of Chinese takeout later, Sam said, “I know it’s here. I can feel it, but...”

“Your dad was programming from the inside. He had spontaneous life form out of code riffs. Don’t beat yourself up because it’s taking two people a couple of months to get close to it. I’m surprised we’ve made it as far as we have.”

Sam grinned. “Well, I know that ‘we’ was mostly you, at least at the beginning. You knew Dad’s coding style.”

Alan shrugged. “Don’t forget, some of it was that I knew _my_ coding style.”

“How could I forget? Your security work... Look, I knew you and Dad were the go-to guys at Encom, but I didn’t realize you two actually wrote so much of the base code.”

“Hell, I remember when a thousand lines was the limit for a program and we tried to keep commands to four letters to save bytes.”

Sam got up and grabbed a couple of beers for them. “You were at the vanguard.”

“It’s not like I create COBOL or anything.”

“No, you just figured out a way to keep viruses out before most people had even heard of a virus. Is it true that not a single Encom program was hit by Michelangelo?”

“Yeah. We also weren’t hit by the ‘I love you’ virus which is arguably more important because by then we were providing many more email services.”

Sam shook his head in admiration. “And it’s because you’re the guy who envisioned security as a program on the side of the users -- not the corporation providing the services -- that it happened. I’ve talked to some of our security programmers. Your approach was -- hell, is -- unique.”

Alan took a sip of his beer. “It’s worked. That’s what’s important. It’s what’s important about Kevin, too. He approached games from an underlying structure that...”

His mouth was stopped with a wet kiss.

“I don’t really want to talk about my Dad right now,” Sam said.

“Me neither.” Alan pulled Sam close, eyes open, letting Sam close the gap, making certain it was really what he wanted.

Sam made his want very clear.

***

Lora stopped by from time to time. Alan was always pleased to see her, and Sam got over his initial weirdness around her after a long heartfelt talk with Alan about their relationship.

Quorra walked in on them once and that conversation had embarrassed Sam, but Alan was unfazed, answering questions about the mechanics between two men as easily as he answered questions about a particularly intricate code loop.

Both women contributed to the "Find Flynn" project, Quorra's insights into Flynn's later personality as it evolved within the system -- and her fears about his recombination with Clu -- were invaluable as the two men reviewed the code, teasing out the fragments that showed Kevin Flynn had touched the grid.

When Quorra left to continue her explorations of the world, Alan and Sam picked up the code and started again with renewed vigor.

***

"That's got to be Clu," Sam said, looking over Alan's shoulder. He kissed the older man's cheek affectionately.

"Probably. But it's also Kevin."

"I think I want Dad back. God only knows what we'd end up with if we left Clu code in his re-integration."

Alan leaned back and wiped at his eyes with the back of his hands. Sam stood behind him and began massaging his shoulders and Alan groaned into the touch.

"Sam," he said, "Clu is part of your Dad. Tron is part of me. Hell, Rinzler is probably part me, part Clu, and part whatever he evolved into on the grid. We have to respect that."

"Dad was never vicious."

Alan put his glasses on and tilted his head back to look at Sam. "No. But he was competitive and driven. He made up his own rules -- one of which was 'never trust the Master Control Progam' -- but he followed the rules he made for himself. From what you've said about Clu…"

Sam sat on the couch and smiled when Alan came over to join him. "Yeah. All of that is definitely in Clu. You know that Dad was mad when he saw me? He'd accepted his fate, and I messed it all up."

"Yeah. Other people do that to a guy." Alan wrapped an arm around his shoulders. "You know that your Dad proposed to Lora. He got so wrapped up in developing Space Maniacs that I ended up going out with her when he stood her up. I don't think of myself as the kind of man to steal his best friend's girlfriend, but that's what I did. Which sounds like Lora had no say in the matter." He shook his head. "But my point stands. I have some things in my personality that are less than flattering to my self-image, and Kevin does too."

Sam chuckled. "I know Lora. She had plenty to say, I'm sure." He thought for a minute. "You and Dad never…"

"No. I loved Kevin. Love him. But it was never physical between us. And, as much as I love you, you'll never be the coding partner he was. Kevin and I complemented each other's skills almost without duplication."

"I'm glad I have a side to you that he never did." He sighed. "Now let's go look at that Clu code and decide what's base code and what's accretion."

Alan smiled. "That sounds like a plan."

***

It took another three months of work before the code was ready to be compiled. The tested every segment they could. They ran the finished code past other sets of eyes and through QA software, hoping there was nothing they'd missed. There was only one chance to get it right, to get back Kevin Flynn and not end up with an empty shell or Clu or a corpse.

It was late when they drove to Flynn's Arcade. Lora met them and cleaned the lens on the laser. She kissed Sam on the cheek and gave Alan a more intimate kiss goodbye and whispered, "Good luck," as she left.

They booted up the computer and checked the thumb drive with all their code on it. Sam plugged it in, and Alan's fingers danced over the keyboard as he reviewed the file names and finally gave the command to compile.

Sam squeezed his hand and pulled him over to the sofa in the corner. The compile program they'd written was deliberately slow, it would stop if anything came up and sound an alarm. Once it was finished, the run command had been incorporated. Kevin Flynn -- they fervently hoped -- would live.

***

Sam kissed Alan thoroughly as they waited on the sofa for a tone to sound indicating a problem. Alan's response was gentle at first, but Sam wouldn't let him just be gentle. He nipped at Alan's throat, dug his fingertips into Alan's shoulders, wrapped his legs around Alan's hips until Alan growled and pushed him back on the narrow couch. They twined together, rousing and heating, rocking their hips and sighing into each other's touch.

They strove for a completion, too heated to bother to strip, too bound up in each other to notice the soft tone and the fast whir of the finished program.

"Well, I suppose that explains a lot."

Kevin Flynn's voice shocked them apart.

Alan sat up quickly, looking at his old friend through the lens of age. He'd watched his own hair silver, his face grow softer in the mirror, but it was a shock seeing Kevin grizzled.

He heard Sam gasp behind him. "Dad?" His voice was a mixture of wonder and skepticism.

Kevin locked eyes with Alan. "I would never have figured you for silver hair. I was sure you'd go bald."

"At least I didn't grow a beard. Do you use that thing to strain your soup?" Alan jumped off the couch and hugged Kevin who slapped his back and grinned.

"I knew you could do it." Kevin turned to look at his son and said, "Both of you working together. Quorra wouldn't understand humans well enough, but…"

Sam found his voice. "Quorra helped a lot. So did Lora."

Kevin looked back at Alan. "Still married?"

"Yes. Still in love, too."

"So my son's just a fling?"

"We're a lot more than a hook-up, Dad, but whatever we are isn't going to change Alan's marriage."

Father and son locked eyes, and Alan wondered if, just for a moment, he was seeing Clu.

Kevin finally nodded and said, "Good. You've talked about it even if you haven't defined it."

"Alan's a good man," Sam began.

"I knew that, son. I was trying to judge whether you were."

Alan cleared his throat. "Kevin. Sam brought himself up when you were trapped. You get to know him, but you don't get to judge him."

Kevin looked between his old friend and his son. "You're right. Both of you. Of course, there's still one question left."

Sam said, "What?"

"Do I get to run Encom again?"

Sam chuckled.

Alan said, "Let's do better than that. Let's start from scratch. I'll bet you that in five years, we'll have broken Encom."

"Just the three of us," Kevin asked.

"Just the five of us," Sam answered. "Quorra and Lora would hate to miss the fun."


End file.
